“Vere it shall blease Gott,” returned Pons’ universal legatee with supreme indifference.
“Send me word,” said Villemot.
Fraisier turned to the head-clerk. “Go after him,” he whispered.
Mme. Cantinet was left in charge, with a provision of fifty francs paid out of the money that they found. The justice of the peace looked out; there Schmucke stood in the courtyard looking up at the windows for the last time.
“You have found a man of butter,” remarked the justice.
“Yes,” said Fraisier, “yes. The thing is as good as done. You need not hesitate to marry your granddaughter to Poulain; he will be head-surgeon at the Quinze-Vingts.” (The Asylum founded by St. Louis for three hundred blind people.)
“We shall see.—Good-day, M. Fraisier,” said the justice of the peace with a friendly air.
“There is a man with a head on his shoulders,” remarked the justice’s clerk. “The dog will go a long way.”
By this time it was eleven o’clock. The old German went like an automaton down the road along which Pons and he had so often walked together. Wherever he went he saw Pons, he almost thought that Pons was by his side; and so he reached the theatre just as his friend Topinard was coming out of it after a morning spent in cleaning the lamps and meditating on the manager’s tyranny.
“Oh, shoost der ding for me!” cried Schmucke, stopping his acquaintance. “Dopinart! you haf a lodging someveres, eh?”